Married Sex During the Week
An online video about sex in marriage has gone little viral over the past few months. Shared almost exclusively by women, it's apparently the funniest thing that some of them have ever seen. It shows a wife's repeated rejection (in hilarious fashion! ha ha ha!) of her husband's initiation of intimacy.
*I have embedded the clip below but if you can't see it, please go directly to our home page at www.INFOforFamilies.com to reload it and watch it. (I don't recommend going to YouTube as some of the suggested videos that follow are not appropriate.)
The clip is obviously meant to be funny, but I assure you that it's not funny at all.
It's really not funny. Just ask your husband.
The reality is that sex to a man is not just about sex. It's about connecting emotionally with his wife. It's about his wife communicating that she values and desires him. When this need is neglected or (as in this case) made fun of, it's just plain sad. It illustrates the incredible disconnect husbands and wives have in the area of sexual and emotional intimacy.
Granted, there are two sides to every story.
Men also need to understand and meet the emotional and sexual needs of their wives. Some men do nothing to help carry the tremendous loads their wives face every day. We recommend some tangible places to start here. Other men have made sex almost exclusively about their own needs so it's no surprise that their wives aren't interested. We recommend this book to guys who want to do better.
Some might suggest that this is just for humor and that this type of behavior is incredibly rare in marriage. But our experience suggests otherwise. We hear of this sort of thing all the time.
Shaunti Feldhahn blogged about this back in the fall and her observations are spot on. If you can relate to this clip (or you thought it was hilarious), I encourage you to read her post. She addresses it far better than I can.
Finally, for any women who want to be more interested in sex but just can't seem to find the energy for it, our friend Sheila Wray Gregoire has created a resource to help. Her "Boost Your Libido" course might be just the thing you need. It's a 10 session online course that you do at your own pace. If anyone can handle with issue with transparency and tact, it's Sheila.
Building a healthy marriage without including sexual intimacy is sort of like trying to start your car with no gas in the tank. Most husbands know exactly what I'm talking about. Most wives do, too. In honor of St. Valentine, maybe it's time that we all topped off our tanks!